- Passing legislation to send more jobs overseas in the midst of the worst jobs
crisis since the Great Depression.

- Not only continuing a forty year old failed war on drugs but increasing the
threats to those who try to end it through various reforms.

- Having the federal government interfere in public education, which has been –
for nearly 200 years – a local matter.

- Jailing citizen protesters while letting a generation of criminal financial
manipulators off the hook.

The fact that the foregoing nonetheless characterizes America today is
indicative of the lack of democracy in this land and of the replacement of
citizen consensus with the money and power of a select few, led by corporate
behemoths.

In each of the foregoing, American policy is driven by the ability of major
corporations to make large profits, whether it be defense contractors, hedge
fund manipulators, the prison industry, the recording industry, outsourcing
businesses, private education vultures, or the illegal drug trade (the only
industry that doesn’t have to report its campaign contributions). And all reported
to us by a monopolized media that reflects in its own nature the very evils it
should be exposing.

There are several names for this.

One is fascism.

One needs to separate Hitler, Nazism and fascism. Conflating these leads the
unwary to assume easily that all three are inevitably characterized by
anti-Semitism, when in fact only the first two are. By avoiding this
distinction we don't have to face the fact that America is closer to fascism
than it has ever been in its history.

To understand why, one needs to look not at Hitler but at the founder of
fascism, Mussolini. What Mussolini founded was the estato corporativo - the
corporative state or corporatism. Writing in Economic Affairs in the mid 1970s,
R.E. Pahl and J. T. Winkler described corporatism as a system under which
government guides privately owned businesses towards order, unity, nationalism
and success. They were quite clear as to what this system amounted to:
"Let us not mince words. Corporatism is fascism with a human face. . . An
acceptable face of fascism, indeed, a masked version of it, because so far the
more repugnant political and social aspects of the German and Italian regimes
are absent or only present in diluted forms."

Adrian Lyttelton, describing the rise of Italian fascism in The Seizure of
Power, writes: "A good example of Mussolini's new views is provided by his
inaugural speech to the National Exports Institute on 8 July 1926. . . Industry
was ordered to form 'a common front' in dealing with foreigners, to avoid 'ruinous
competition,' and to eliminate inefficient enterprises. . . The values of
competition were to be replaced by those of organization: Italian industry
would be reshaped and modernized by the cartel and trust. . .There was a new
philosophy here of state intervention for the technical modernization of the
economy serving the ultimate political objectives of military strength and
self-sufficiency; it was a return to the authoritarian and interventionist war
economy."

Lyttelton writes that "fascism can be viewed as a product of the
transition from the market capitalism of the independent producer to the
organized capitalism of the oligopoly." It was a point that Orwell noted
when he described fascism as being but an extension of capitalism. Lyttelton
quoted Nationalist theorist Affredo Rocco: "The Fascist economy is. . . an
organized economy. It is organized by the producers themselves, under the
supreme direction and control of the state."

The Germans had their own word for it: wehrwirtschaft. It was not an entirely
new idea there. As William Shirer points out in the Rise and the Fall of the
Third Reich, 18th and 19th century Prussia had devoted some five-sevenths of
its revenue on the Army and "that nation's whole economy was always
regarded as primarily an instrument not of the people's welfare but of military
policy."

Another more complex example is Adolf Hitler. On many grounds, the analogy does
not serve us well:

Germany's willingness to accept Hitler was the product of many cultural
characteristics specific to that country, to the anger and frustrations in the
wake of the World War I defeat, to extraordinary inflation and particular dumb
reactions to it, and, of course, to the appeal of anti-Semitism. Still,
consideration of the Weimar Republic that preceded Hitler does us no harm.
Bearing in mind all the foregoing, there was also:

- A collapse of conventional liberal and conservative politics that bears
uncomfortable similarities to what we are now experiencing.

- The gross mismanagement of the economy and of such key worker concerns as
wages, inflation, pensions, layoffs, and rising property taxes. Many of the
actions were taken in the name of efficiency, an improved economy and the
"rationalization of production." There were also bankruptcies,
negative trade balance, major decline in national production, large national
debt rise compensated for by foreign investment. In other words, a hyped
version of what America and its workers are experiencing today.

- The Nazis as the first modern political party. As University of Pennsylvania
professor Thomas Childers explains, the Nazis discovered the importance of
campaigning not just during campaigns but between elections when the other
parties folded their tents. With this "perpetual campaigning" they
spread themselves like a virus, considering the public reaction to everything
right down to the colors used for posters and rally backgrounds. Knowing this,
one can not watch the manic manipulations of the Republican presidential
candidates without a sense of déjà vu.

- The use of negative campaigning, a contribution to modern politics by Joseph
Goebbels. The Nazi campaigns argued what was wrong with their opponents and
ignored stating their own policies.

- The Nazis as the inventors of modern political propaganda. Every modern
American political campaign and the types of arguments used to support them
owes much to the ideas of the Nazis.

- The suddenness of the Nazi rise. The party went from less than 3% of the vote
to being the largest party in the country in four years.

- The collapse of the country's self image. Childers points out that Germany
had had been a world leader in education, industry, science, and literacy. Much
of the madness that we see today stems from attempts to compensate for our
battered self-image.

So while many of the behaviors that would come to be associated with Nazis and
Hitler - from physical attacks on political opponents to the death camps - seem
far removed from our present concerns, there is still much to learn from their
history.

We are clearly in a post-constitutional era; the end of the First American
Republic. Depending on what day it is we can think of its replacement variously
- ranging from an adhocracy to proto-fascism. But one does not need to know the
end of the story to know that we headed at a rapid pace away from the
extraordinary principles of American democracy towards the dark hole of power
with impunity, to the sort of world in which, as Rudolph Giuliani has calmly
asserted, "freedom is about authority."

For example, Article 48 of the constitution of the Weimar Republic stated,
"In case public safety is seriously threatened or disturbed, the Reich
President may take the measures necessary to reestablish law and order, if
necessary using armed force. In the pursuit of this aim, he may suspend the
civil rights described in articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153,
partially or entirely. The Reich President must inform the Reichstag
immediately about all measures undertaken . . . The measures must be suspended
immediately if the Reichstag so demands."

It was this article that Hitler used to peacefully establish his dictatorship.
And why was it so peaceful and easy? Because, according to Childers, the
'democratic" Weimar Republic had already used it 57 times prior to
Hitler's ascendancy.

There are eerie similarities between Article 48 and the Patriot Act. When you
add to this the remarkable incompetence of recent presidential regimes, the
collapse of both traditional liberal and conservative politics, and the economic
crises, it feels like a new Weimar Republic setting the stage for awful things
we can not at this point even imagine. It may be that history has something to
tell us after all.

Franklin Roosevelt certainly thought so. As he put it: “The liberty of a democracy
is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where
it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is
fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group,”

1 comment:

The eleven points stated at beginning seem examples of any irresponsible government, not necessarily a fascist State.

I am glad you eventually got around to stating how fascism began, and what it actually is though.

One example of fascism would be when Politicians are shills for Corporations / Corporate Think Tanks. I'm sure its handy for Politicians, whose time is precious, to just find some pre-written Bill to bring to Congress, but it does lead to problems.

SAY IT AGAIN, SAM

ABOUT THE EDITOR

The Review is edited by Sam Smith, who covered Washington under nine presidents, has edited the Progressive Review and its predecessors since 1964, wrote four books, been published in five anthologies, helped to start six organizations (including the DC Humanities Council, the national Green Party and the DC Statehood Party), was a plaintiff in three successful class action suits, served as a Coast Guard officer, and played in jazz bands for four decades.

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Regularly ahead of the curve, the Review has opposed federal drug policy for over 40 years, was a lonely media voice against the massive freeways planned for Washington, was an early advocate of bikeways and light rail, and helped spur the creation of the DC Statehood Party and the national Green Party,

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